Product Description

What is a carquinyoli?

Carquinyolis are dry pastries typical of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Aragon, Aquitaine, Sicily and Tuscany. Each place has its variety: dryness, chopped or whole almonds, with chocolate, wider or thinner.

In Catalonia the carquinyoli that stands out is the ones from San Quentin Mediona, those from the Espluga Francolí, Caldes de Montbui or Rupit and Pruit.

Carquinyolis are usually made with a mixture of sugar, flour, egg and toasted almonds. Here, however, you will find glutenfree, sugarfree, dairyfree, eggfree and yeastfree carquinyolis.

To make them one would form a flattened and elongated trunk of about 3-6 cm wide by 2 cm. Once cooked it is cut into slices 1-2 cm thick just to be toasted again. They are eaten cold. You can serve them with sweet wine, as a dessert or snack.

Almonds must be whole and unpeeled. You can add ground anise (aniseed), lemon essence, vanilla.

A little history:

The first documented recipe comes from an Italian manuscript of Amadio Baldanzi a pratense scholar of the eighteenth century, preserved in the archives of Prato. This document was called biscote the Genoese. The recipe was later recovered by pastry chef Antonio Mattei in the nineteenth century and has come down to us with more or less modern variants. The baker himself presented the carquinyoli at the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition and received a special mention.

Carquinyolis are used in various traditional Catalan dishes such as rice with sardines or rabbit. They are also used in the sauce for onions (calçots) or the sauce in a recipe for a duck in Baix Llobregat.

In the city of Vic (Catalunya), the “carquinyoli” is who conducts the annual summer festival in honor of the patron St. Albert of Sicily.

The Vic carquinyoli was born in the mid-nineteenth century, in the form of a grotesque doll symbolizing hunger and shortages occurring as a result of an epidemic that broke out in the city of Vic and thanks to the blessed water St. Albert did not produce deaths among neighbors.
On St. Albert’s Day, neighbors walk the carquinyoli doll around the neighborhood. First it was a disproportionate character, very dry and thin; But over the years it took on other forms and meanings. In recent decades, every year, the carquinyoli changes the face for a famous person, an artist, a politician or media personality.
For more than 100 years, carquinyols arrives at the train station, an event that attracts hundreds of carquinyolis (doll devotees) who, encouraged by a musical fanfare accompany the protagonist, who is perched on a balcony in the neighborhood, from which he presides over all festivities in honor of St. Albert.
From the balcony, the doll makes a speech directed at neighbors and participant, and then they all sing the traditional song:

Carquinyoli Song

Chorus
And where you’re going, carquinyols, carquinyols,
and where you’re going, this carquinyols nose.

Storage conditions: In a cool, dry place. Expiration date: one month from date of purchase. It can be used as a basis to thicken a soup or a sauce, ​​to make crostini for appetizers, or in soups as fried bread.